


Not Feeling the Filk-Love

by Elf (Elfwreck)



Series: Filk & the AO3 [1]
Category: AO3, No Fandom
Genre: Filk, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-06
Updated: 2011-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/pseuds/Elf
Summary: I'm not thinking, "hey! The AO3 should support filk!" I'm thinking, "hey, if the AO3 wants to support filk, it's not set up for it."
Series: Filk & the AO3 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664758
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Not Feeling the Filk-Love

_Help! I'm a filker trapped in a morning person's body!_ \--filk t-shirt slogan.

This is a spinoff of/followup to my [AO3 squee](http://elf.dreamwidth.org/413040.html) post, wherein I acknowledge that I love AO3 even though they don't support my fannishness. This is one of my fannishnesses that they don't support.

I'm a filker. [Filk music](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Filk) is, briefly sorta-kinda, the music of SF fandom. (Please don't poke holes in my definition; I know it's woefully incomplete. I don't want this to include a 2000-word [attempt to define filk](http://www.interfilk.org/interfilk/filk.htm).) A lot of it's to the tune of other songs, both traditional & modern. Some of it's original tunes. A lot is about media fannish topics;1 some is metafannish;2 some is space-and-other-scifi-themes (including a lot of computer-themed songs),3 some is fantasy-themes,4 some is just outright original.5 For songs with original tunes and not-obviously-F&SF themes, it can be hard to sort out what the "filk" part is, but we think it's like smut: we know it when we see it. Or hear it.

Disclaimer: I'm not unhappy with AO3 or the OTW. I'm not angry. I don't think they're Doing It Wrong. I'm confused, a bit; I'm not sure if AO3 wants to be a home for filk in addition to fic/art/vids, or if it is just willing to be a home for filk when it fits the notion of "fiction etc" fanworks. (I am sure the OTW wants to support filking. I'm much less sure that AO3 wants to be a filk archive.) Knowing that the plan is/was "make fic archive; extend to art when we've got space and software; extend to vids when we've got whoa huge space and software; extend to, ahm, otherstuff, over time as resources etc allow," I haven't felt abandoned or shoved aside. I've felt somewhat overlooked, but shrug; filk is very used to being "those weird people in the corner OMG do they have kazoos?" What filkers generally want is space to be with other filkers, not active integration with other fanac. (See [Dandelion Conspiracy](http://www.greatwesternmedicineshow.com/dandelion/).)

I'm not thinking, "hey! The AO3 should support filk!" I'm thinking, "hey, if the AO3 wants to support filk, it's not set up for it." And if the theory is, "if filkers want to use AO3, great; when there's enough filk, we'll sort out if it needs any specific changes"—that's not gonna work. Filk takes a different approach from fanfic, and right now, AO3's only appeal as a filk archive is "I keep my fic there, and it'd be nice to have all my stuff in one place."

Well. Sort-of all my stuff. I have 7 filksongs at AO3. (Okay 5 filksongs and 2 filk "poems.") 4 are Harry Potter fandom; 3 are other. Within the last two weeks, I finished writing 3 filks I'd been working on; I intend to post one of them to AO3. In the "myfilk" folder in my hard drive, I have 17 more "normal" filks, 6 Pagan filks about coffee (one song-length & 5 chants—think of 'em as drabbles), and 15 other Pagan filksongs. Of those, 4 are definitely fannish in AO3 flavor, and 2 more might count as "RPF" fandom songs. The other 26? Might not belong at AO3.

I wrote [A Question of Coffee](http://elf.dreamwidth.org/99816.html), to the tune of/as a parody of [The Question Song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dd2vukYP6A) ([lyrics](http://www.bardicarts.org/songs/Goddess/questionsong.html)), which itself is (loosely) to the tune of the traditional [Twa Corbies](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-7I8RlrnTE).

Should I put it on AO3? What would the fandom be?

This is not "would it be okay to put it at AO3?" Of course it would. Nobody's going to complain about a (hopefully) funny coffee song cluttering up the archive. If I posted to AO3 every shred of filk I ever wrote, including the dozen-plus things in my WIP folder, it'd still be a blip on the archive.

The question is: should I go through the links at [Darn Near All the Filk on the Net](http://suburbanbanshee.net/filk/filklink.html), last updated in 2003, looking for link rot (about half the links to songs are broken) and contacting filkers saying, "hey! Shiny new fannish archive; throw your filky fanworks here and they won't vanish from the web!" (Brief answer: no. It's not made to support filk. That might change.)

I dunno if much of the fanfic crowd knows this, but … filk is not small. Filk is not a tiny, slow corner of fandom. Filk is a 50+ year fannish activity with its own conventions, awards, publications, BNFs, [legends](http://web.archive.org/web/20110107100324/http://www.smithway.org/fantales/filkroom.html), and wankish politics. And it's been active on the net since the beginning; it was strong on FIDOnet and possibly exchanged on [ARPAnet](http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00022.html).

If AO3 is welcoming to filk, not just "umyeah if it's related to a media fandom I guess you can put it here," it could find itself hosting _thousands_ of filksongs—cluttering up the archive and making it hard to find fic.

If it's only intended for identifiable-media-fandoms, and original songs like [Guilty Pleasures](http://steve.savitzky.net/Songs/guilty/) don't belong at AO3—then AO3 is not a filk archive.

Drawing lines between original & obviously-specifically-parodic filk is rather like having a kink-free fanfic archive. On the one hand, sure, you can have any archive you like. On the other, who's policing the definitions and deciding if a particular story is too kinky? End result: only strongly kink-averse people archive there; for the rest, it's not worth trying to figure out where the lines are. There's plenty of filk archives for specific-media-fandoms only ([Vor](http://www.dendarii.co.uk/Filk/) [Potter](http://www.harrypotterfilks.com/) [Star Wars](http://www.clubjade.net/filk/archives.html)), and plenty of link-roundup sites, but no comprehensive "you can put your filks here really!" websites. Or at least, none that are large & active & for lyrics.

If AO3 wants to host filk (as opposed to "wouldn't mind if there's some filk on the archive," which is I think where we are now), it'd first have to decide if that means "all filk, as defined by filkers," or if some filk falls under "transformative fanworks" and other filks don't. And every hint of less-than-complete acceptance is a chance for the filk community to say, "meh; I can post mp3s to the [Scrumpy archive](http://filkarchive.scrumpy.org/), and lyrics all over the place. Why bother putting half my filk in one place when I can't put the other half there?"

I'm supposing, for the time being, that AO3 would allow all filk. (Working from the theory that [Hope Eyrie](http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/hopeeyrie.mp3) ([lyrics](http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/hope-eyrie.html)) is as "transformative" as Colbert/Stewart slash.) The line between "filk" and "folk music" is blurry, but hey, we've got similar blurs in fanart. If AO3 is not open to all-of-filk, only the stuff that ties to media fandom & maybe anthropomorfics, then filk is outside the scope of the AO3, and word can trickle out that it's a fanfic archive with tolerance for some filk.

However, even if it wants to have filk, it's currently pretty much useless as a filk archive. The "fandom" and "character" tagging only works on some filks. (Should parody filks on nonspecific topics list the original song as the "fandom?" Mygods, we could add hundreds of new AO3 fandoms with one big upload fest. Greensleeves could be the new megafandom.) There's no obvious spot for "to the tune of" or "inspired by" or "words by vs tune by." And the formatting doesn't easily allow for chords.

This has been a problem with online communication since the beginning, and since the early days, filkers have been trying to find ways around it. A lot of filk archives are in monospace fonts, in order to allow the chord progressions to [line up over the right letters](http://xocolatl.com/kathy/lyrics/CHICKJK.html); some do elaborate arrangements with invisible tables; others list the [chords to the side](http://catfish.dhs.org/~happyfish/filk/hasnot.html).

I don't blame the AO3 for not having sorted all that out. It's not easy, and there's nothing intuitive about how filk gets sorted into genres, and the OTW is not staffed by a strong filking contingent. In my next post, I'll go into "how the AO3 could support filk;" this one's just for pondering the gaps, hopefully without coming across as overly bitchy. Because I love the OTW; I love AO3; I want to see them both thrive and become great resources for all of fandom. Including, of course, the parts of fandom I love best.  


* * *

**Examples** , much swiped from the [Virtual Filksing](http://www.prometheus-music.com/eli/virtual.html):  
1a) **Media topic, original tune** : [Shai Hulud](http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/shaihulud.mp3) by Kathy Mar, sung by Julia Ecklar; [Lyrics](http://xocolatl.com/kathy/lyrics/SHULUD.html).  
1b) **Media topic, semi-borrowed tune** : [Mal's Song](http://www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/Mal_consonance.mp3) by Michelle Dockrey; [Lyrics](http://vixyandtony.com/lyrics_mal.html)  
1c) **Media topic, mainstream tune** : [Five Years](http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/five_years.htm) by Tom Smith, tune--One Week by Barenaked Ladies.

2) **Metafannish** : [Livejournal Shanty](http://catfish.dhs.org/~happyfish/filk/vixy-conterpoint2007-ljshanty.mp3) by Brooke Lunderville, sung by Vixy & Tony; [Lyrics](http://catfish.dhs.org/~happyfish/filk/livejournalshanty.html)

3a) **Space-geeky** , original tune: [Fire in the Sky](http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/fireinthesky.mp3) by Jordin Kare, sung by Kristoph Klover, [Lyrics PDF](http://www.prometheus-music.com/print/TTTS_Booklet.pdf).  
3b) **Computer-geeky** , borrowed tune: [Eternal Flame](http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/eternalflame.mp3) a.k.a. "God Wrote in LISP," by Bob Kanefsky, sung by Julia Ecklar; tune: God Lives on Terra; [Lyrics](http://www.songworm.com/lyrics/songworm-parody/EternalFlame.html).

4) **Fantasy, orig tune** : [Merlin](http://www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/Merlin.mp3) by Michelle Dockrey (about _The Crystal Cave_ ); [lyrics](http://www.cyphertext.net/escapekey/Merlin.txt)  
4b) **Fantasy, mainstream tune** : [Elfin Wizard](http://www.filk.com/songs/ELFIN%20WIZARD.htm) by Jesse Mundis; tune--Pinball Wizard.

5) **Other** : [The Word of God](http://www.prometheus-music.com/audio/wordgod.mp3) by Cat Faber, sung by Kathy Mar; [Lyrics](http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally at <http://elf.dreamwidth.org/415267.html>, where there are comments.


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